Ironman 70.3 Austria report

The first major event of the year took place for me last Sunday in St. Pölten, outside Vienna. This was my second time to the event and I really enjoyed it last year. My hope was to improve on my average performance of last year, but I knew ahead of time that getting an early season result is very difficult to predict.

So I entered with very little self-pressure to do a big result and only the hope to improve and have fun. This more or less was accomplished but my performance still has quite a lot of room for improvement.

The right from the start the swim was kicking my ass as usual. The swim being my big weakness, I am very used to this by now, but in this race it seemed like the pack was going faster than usual and I was going slower than usual. In the end I was about 4 minutes in back of the first guys and 1 minute behind my pace from last year.

The bike was very fun as the hilly course suites me well. But starting so far back from the swim made for a long lonely day on the bike. I passed many people when ever the course went up hill but the rest of the day I was going solo. The bike times were a few minutes slower than last year by everyone and I was no exception. I rode very conservatively and was able to keep a consistent pace the whole day, even if it was slower than I could maybe to at maximum effort.

Onto the run I kept the same rhythm of a conservative pace for the first 10km and then began to push harder for the final 10km. Unfortunately I maybe ate a little too much the day before and started to need a toilet very badly in the final 5km. By the last 3km my stomach was a total mess and cramping very badly. It became not possible to push hard anymore and my pace slowed substantially. On a positive note, I still managed to do my best 1/2 marathon time in a triathlon! It's a shame i could not have kept my pace the full distance as it would have been even faster by a couple minutes at least.

After the race I felt positive about the results despite not being as fast or high placed as i had hoped. This leaves me very ready for the next event in Switzerland in less than two weeks. The course there is similar and I feel like my form is starting to get more ready for a better result.

First need to rest up and kick this little head cold I got from travelling. But overall, things are going well.

A big thanks to all my sponsors including Felt Bicycles, BBB components and accessories, Huntteri importers, and DeSoto wetsuit and triathlon gear. They have helped get me to this race with the best possible equipment. Posted below is a quick picture of my new Felt DA... please remember to wipe the drool off your keyboard after seeing this picture. I keep a role of toilet paper handy at all times just for this reason ;-) I will do an in-depth story on this bike shortly when I get some better pictures and time to write. But damn.. this is a fast fast bike!